A higher standard for accountability

Tag Archives: Issues

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” Maya Angelou

A really good example of this (assuming you’ve been out of school longer than Justin Bieber’s singing career) is to recall your favourite teacher in school or university. Now hold on to that name for a second, try to recall why that teacher was your favourite? What exactly did they do? What did they say? Can you remember the situation? Can you remember something they said to you?

For many of us, our memory would only serve us as far the name is concerned. That’s not to say we have poor memory but it’s a strong indicator that our feelings are hardcoded in our memory. We remember good and bad. We may not remember why and quiet frankly that may not be important.

When you begin to realize this, it starts to have a profound effect on the way you deal with others – and believe me I haven’t mastered this, I’m very much still learning!

In today’s corporate culture of high delivery, fast pace, ultra commitments and perhaps careers “on the line” it’s easy to get worked-up over the problems we face day-to-day. We’re easily overcome with anger, frustration, and a mis-placed feeling of wanting someone to blame.

When that happens….Pause.

Keep saying to yourself “my problem will be resolved”

You may not know at that moment how or by whom, in fact, you may not even have control over that other than taking the appropriate measures and steps to resolve it.

What you can control however, is how you treat people when this happens! Because everyone you’re working with will not remember this situation or this problem 4 or 5 or even 1 year down the line but they will remember how you made them feel when it happened.

Stay Calm, Cool and Composed.

The key is to control your emotions rather than having them control you.

You maybe accountable for delivery, but you are also accountable for how you behave and work with others and if you have a short fuse you’ll quickly find that not many people will want to be around you to solve the next problem that occurs.